GOLDEN AGE OF TV COMEDY GLOWS AGAIN

Tom Shales, Washington Post Writers GroupCHICAGO TRIBUNE

We all would like to think we are living in a golden age of something. This is probably a golden age of fast food, but it`s hard to get very excited about that. It`s a golden age of electronic miniaturization, but miniaturization is no big deal.

One thing this might be is a golden age of looking back at other golden ages. For the next few weeks, cable-TV families may feel they are living in a golden age of television comedy, but some of the best of that comedy is going to be from nights gone by. Nights gone by are going to go by again.

Showtime, the pay-cable network, is livening up April by turning it into a tribute--''Showtime Salutes American Comedy.'' There will be comedy shows every night for the rest of the month, with the centerpiece on Monday night for ''TV the Way It Was,'' an evening of primetime devoted to TV comedy of the `50s and `60s.

The lineup will include a complete February 1952 edition of ''The Colgate Comedy Hour'' starring Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis. This was back when Jerry Lewis was actually funnier than Dean Martin. Tuning in to see Lewis run riot got to be a national habit, even if the ''Comedy Hour'' did air opposite the top-rated ''Ed Sullivan Show.''

A 1958 Sullivan hour will also be part of the lineup on Showtime. ''The Friars Roast Ed Sullivan'' was a departure from the show`s usual vaudeville format and featured such comics of the day as Jack E. Leonard, Joey Bishop and Joe E. Lewis skewing Sullivan. Also on the dais, Showtime reports is, of all people, Walter Cronkite.

Showtime has had great success with its year-long run of ''The Honeymooners--The Lost Episodes'' starring Jackie Gleason and Art Carney. On its all-old-comedy night, Showtime will offer a complete edition of ''The Jackie Gleason Show'' of which the ''Honeymooners'' sketches were one segment. The program will open with a chorus number by the June Taylor Dancers, as it used to do every Saturday night on CBS.

''Ten from Your Show of Shows,'' a feature-length compilation of sketches from the classic Sid Caesar comedy program, and a 1967 re-enactment of Steve Allen`s spoofy ''Prickly Heat Telethon'' will round out the evening on Showtime. Showtime has other comedy specials planned for the month, some of them to be introduced by the redoubtable, and very reboundable, Milton Berle. Showtime also is scheduling a major comedy attraction for May: the first cable-TV performance in seven years by Jay Leno, the best young standup comedian in the country (perhaps on the planet Earth; the other planets we can`t be sure about). ''Jay Leno and the American Dream'' premieres on Showtime May 7.

April may not be the cruelest month, as T.S. Eliot said it was, but on commercial network television, it is overrun with reruns. The networks are almost out of new episodes of their weekly series and they like to save the fresh ones left for the May ratings sweeps. So it`s a month when cable TV can shine and, apparently, will. A golden age that only lasts a few weeks is still better than none.